God and the World

In order to understand God and the world in this «postmodern» age, Gregory S. Cootsona analyzes two seminal twentieth-century thinkers: the scientist and philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, and the theologian, Karl Barth. Whitehead began constructing a philosophy of nature in 1910, which developed into a comprehensive metaphysics in his 1929 opus magnum, Process and Reality. Whitehead described the world and God as dynamically interconnected actual entities. Although Barth clearly posited a diastasis between God and the world in the 1922 second edition of Der Römerbrief, he discovered a more subtle, christologically-based reconciliation of the world and God in the Church Dogmatics (1932–1968). Though the two differ greatly, several points of comparison can be found. The final chapter presents the challenge and inspiration that twenty-first century theologians can receive from Barth and Whitehead.